WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in GROUP BY clause and contains nonaggregated column 'cantehk_wrdp1.wp_posts.post_date' which is not functionally dependent on columns in GROUP BY clause; this is incompatible with sql_mode=only_full_group_by]
SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) AS `year`, MONTH(post_date) AS `month`, count(ID) as posts FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY YEAR(post_date), MONTH(post_date) ORDER BY post_date DESC
Tue 18 Sep 2007
Posted by 馬先生 under Cantonese
I found an old recording that I made 1.5 years ago. Let’s see how much I’ve improved -
It appears my accent has not improved, but I think I sound a little bit better in comparison to the first recording. I hope I won’t plateau as time goes on.
Hong KongWordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in GROUP BY clause and contains nonaggregated column 'cantehk_wrdp1.wp_posts.post_date' which is not functionally dependent on columns in GROUP BY clause; this is incompatible with sql_mode=only_full_group_by]
SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) AS `year`, MONTH(post_date) AS `month`, count(ID) as posts FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY YEAR(post_date), MONTH(post_date) ORDER BY post_date DESC
September 19th, 2007 at 10:15 am
There was significant improvement! The second recording is much more comprehensible!
September 20th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Of course you’ve improved a lot….gaa1 jau4*2 aa3 mai5 laan4 sin1 saang1
September 20th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Wow! you’ve made a great improvement , I think! To be perfectly honest, I could only understand the first audio clip after hearing it several times.On the other hand, I could understand the second one right away.Your pronunciation is much clearer and accurate.On top of that, the second one sounds more natural too.
keep up the good work
September 20th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Also, I would like to take the chance to announce that I’ve created a blog about Cantonese.It consists of stories in Cantonese with the transcript in Chinese characters and the English translation.Up untill now there are only 2 stories, but I’ll be uploading more in the future. the url is
http://cantostories.podbean.com
Thanks
September 20th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Just randomly found your site when looking up Cantonese language stuff. You truly are an inspiration
I actually want to go back to HK sometime (who knows when :() and increase my fluency in Cantonese. And I definitely see it being possible through your experiences and stuff!
Cheers, and g’luck!
September 21st, 2007 at 10:49 pm
As a slightly atrophied native Cantonese speaker, the recording of yourself after 3 months study was comparable to the Steve Kaufmann entry you posted in Jan ‘07 where he spoke in in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. If anything, yours was more tonally accurate as as you only had a “Westerner” accent, where as Steve had the interesting mix of Westerner and Mandarin accent!
Regarding your most recent recording, it is markedly improved. Yes there is still a slight Westerner accent there, though considering a couple of Fujianese uncles of mine who have been in Hong Kong for some 30 years since their 20’s, their accent is stronger than yours!
To my ears, if you insist on getting rid of the “Westerner” accent, your “weak” points are the fact you tend to miss the initial or final “ng” consonant and putting a rising tone on those that are meant to be flat or falling. That is what seems to mark the difference in sound with the Westerner accent and non-Cantonese Chinese dialect accents… Mandarin speakers for example will often get the tone right, though will use an intermediate consonant or vowel that is between Mandarin and Cantonese!
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 pm
in most languages (mandarin included) a westerner accent sounds horrible, but for some reasons this accent sounds awesome in cantonese. maybe not a 100% westerner accent (like as if an american student had just learnt 2 weeks of cantonese) but like a fairly proficient accent but still with that “gwailou” twang to it. it just sounds so suave and cool i dunno, i just love the gwailou voice, i hope you have one! (I can’t listen to the audio as my internet is capped down to 64kbps - thankyou Telstra!)
oh yeah, and if you’ve been back to sydney try speaking cantonese there it’s pretty funny because most people seem to speak mandarin there nowadays…
September 25th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Natural, tones are accurate, fluent.
I think your pronunciation is comparable to Gregory Rivers. There are some traces of a western accent, but it won’t affect communication at all. I couldn’t find out where exactly the (slight) “westerness” comes from. I noticed some minor errors after listening to the clip for 5 times. 1. the vowel in fan1 should be a little bit shorter, 2. the rising of soeng2 should be lengthened, 3. the pitch of ging1 (as in ging1 jim6) can be a little bit higher.
It would be nice if you could upload more sound clips (or a full conversation between you and another speaker).
October 21st, 2007 at 6:19 am
Thank you for letting us hear your 3 month level recording. I started learning Cantonese only two weeks ago, so the recording sounds fantastic to me regardless of whether there might have been errors.
I hope that I will be able to understand what you said in a few weeks, and if I can speak with such confidence, and with such a convincing Cantonese sound (to non-Cantonese ears at least), in three or even six months from now, that would be quite a thrill!
Fluent Cantonese can be heard everywhere, any day. This is the first and possibly the only time I’ll hear another beginning Cantonese student, to form some vision of what I might achieve during the first year.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:01 am
There was definitely an improvement. The first one was along the lines of some guy just saying “ching chong ching ching chong ching chong” (practically), and the second one actually made a lot of sense with intonations that were much closer to the actual word. The first on sounded like you were singing, but the second one sounded like you were talking.